Building a Black Future: Christopher Paul Harris
November 30th, 2023
“If anything crystallizes the failure of our democracy as it stands, it's war.”
Christopher Paul Harris is Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of To Build A Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care. We discuss why addressing our society’s hard-wired prejudices must be a substantial part of our endeavors toward a truly multicultural democracy.
Central to building a Black future is reframing and recreating institutions from the perspective of those who have been historically marginalized. The core of the Black movement is a response to Black pain and anti Black violence. Despite all the violence, Black Joy is evidence that Black communities are thriving and serve as a prefigurative politics of what’s possible on the other side of pain. Care is recognizing that Black people and other marginalized communities carry trauma and need healing.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Christopher Paul Harris
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Christopher Paul Harris Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
On this show, we've been interested in the question of whether we can achieve a multiracial democracy in the United States. The jury is still out on this because, as we all know, there's a wide inequity in the lived experience of many Americans. We've discussed various forces that prevent us from succeeding, whether that's counter- majoritarian institutions, the injustice meted out by the carceral system, or systemic racism. Addressing our society's hardwired prejudices based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and economic status must be a substantial part of our endeavours towards a truly multicultural democracy. And so the questions remain: how do we get there? What do we need to do?
To unpack this, we are joined by Christopher Paul Harris. He's assistant professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care. Welcome, Chris, and thank you for joining us.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:01:26] Thank you for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:29] So first of all, the book is quite beautiful. Congratulations. Christopher Paul Harris: [00:01:33] I appreciate that.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:34] Oh, you're welcome. And I thought to start, let's set the stage. Your book is about the groundwork that's necessary to make a Black future possible. And I'm hoping you can help us see the intersection between a healthy, democratic society and a Black future. Now, I know you don't have a preconception of what it will actually look like when it comes to life. But tell us the key elements that you think are a must in a Black future.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:02:01] Yeah. Thank you. Great question. From the perspective of the movement for Black lives, which is what I write about, I think that there are several things that would be important. And the first one, I think would be reimagining what our institutions look like. In the US, we claim to operate under a democracy, but our institutions really aren't structured in that way. So to begin with, we would need to have institutions that actually work for people. Now, in order to do that, I think we also need to reimagine what it means to have institutions that work for people. It's not just creating new institutions, but having an imaginary that actually thinks past the types of institutions that we currently have and towards ones that actually care about the lived experience of most people, and in particular those who have been historically marginalized. So I'm thinking not just about Black people in general as a monolith, but of course, I'm thinking about Black people in particular, as the title of the book speaks to. But I'm thinking about Black women, Black, trans and gender non- conforming folks, the Black poor. I'm thinking about the differently abled. If we think from the perspective of their lived experiences and operate according to the things that those people say that they need. I believe we'll begin to structure institutions in a completely different way, a radically different way. And so as a basis, I think those are where we would start to move away from the sort of institutional frameworks that we've become accustomed to and reframe and recreate institutions from the perspective of those who have been historically marginalized.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:45] Yeah, I thought that was very strong in your book about essentially, you know, making the case that if we're not centering the people who are most marginalized, most vulnerable, then we're really only catering to a small subset of people.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:04:01] Exactly.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:01] But before we go further, I thought we need to have a mutual understanding about anti-Blackness, because you use this a lot sort of as a basis from which to take action. So how would you define anti-Blackness?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:04:13] I would define anti-Blackness as a structural, ideological, and in some ways psychological paradigm that emerged at a particular moment in time, coterminous with the development of the modern world system, the
world that we live under right now, and capitalism. So anti-Blackness in this way is a mode of operating in the world that places Black people, or those who are assigned the racial category of Blackness, basically at the bottom of the well. And this is sometimes very obvious in terms of, say, state sanctioned violence, police violence. The murder of George Floyd animated a global uprising. Those are ways in which it's very obvious, but it's also hidden. Right. And here we're talking about the ways that Black people have historically been segregated, or the life chances that Black people have, the health disparities that Black people encounter. And this is within the context of the US, I'm speaking, but it's a global phenomenon, right? We can see anti-Blackness show up even on the continent of Africa in Colourism, the way that people who have lighter skin are valorized in ways that people who have darker skin are not. They tend to be pathologized. And so anti-Blackness for me, is a structure under which the world essentially operates. And it's not a ontological or metaphysical state. It's something that was manufactured alongside of the rise of capitalism as the center of the world system.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:12] You make a case in your book about capitalism and civilization, democracy ... and that civilization is already dead, and that to remain impervious to social decline and the "farce of so-called democracy is the height of self-deception." What we need, you argue, is a new radical politics that will make real the abolitionist praxis of a world undone. And as per your subtitle of the book, it's The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care. And I would say that those three words are probably not top of mind for me when I think about politics. So what's radical about this kind of politics?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:06:53] Yes. Well, so first of all, I should say the book is a meditation on the Movement for Black Lives and really thinking about what Black political thought and culture is in the contemporary moment. And the work was really grounded in my on the ground experiences within the movement. And so joy, pain and care emerged to me from the movement. These aren't categories that I'm placing onto it. It's what emerged directly out of it. But what's radical about it? Right. Okay, so let's take pain first. I believe that the core of Black movement has always been and continues to be a response to Black pain, a response to Black death, a response to anti- Black violence, and all the ways that violence shows up. But pain in and of itself is not enough. It's how you respond to it. Right? And so I think in this present movement moment, there is a particular regard, regard as a word that I use in the book for Black pain, which invites a particular kind of response to the political. It means that operating
within the status quo is insufficient. Regard for Black pain means that we need to radically reimagine the world and our institutions and how we treat each other. So it begins with pain, but it can't end with pain. There's a regard for pain, and that invites an understanding of Black joy as not just merriment, but as a way of prefiguring a future, a future that will only come with that regard for pain. So joy is not just a counterweight to the violences of the world, it's also a call towards the otherwise possibilities that we might render with and for each other. If we regard Black pain. And in order to have that kind of regard, in order to see Black joy, one must have care. Care here is a counter civilizational force insofar as it moves us away from the world as it is, it necessitates a move away from the world as it is towards what we might otherwise be. If we're not burdened by ideological assumptions, if we're not blinded by, in the case of America, the kind of mythological way we talk about the Founding Fathers or the way we pretend that our quote unquote. Democracy is a beacon for the world, right? And then use that to justify military interventions abroad. And we've been doing that for a very long time now. Right. And so that's what's radical about joy, pain and care. It's the otherwise possibilities that it opens up. And again, that's directly taken from my observations of movement and movement culture.
Mila Atmos: [00:09:44] Mmm. I want to add here that I feel like the book reads like a manual, you know, and I know that this is really about the Movement for Black Lives primarily. That's where you have done your scholarship and that's how this book came about. But I also feel very strongly as a reader and somebody who's been doing a pro- democracy podcast for five years, that you need other people to buy in. So everybody needs to buy into the same vision or we're really not going to get there. We need to lock arms and do the work together. And so I would really like to dig a little bit deeper. You talked about the regard for Black pain being central, and you start the chapter on regarding Black pain with a live taping of the shooting death of Philando Castile. Why did you start there?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:10:35] Yeah, there are a couple of ways to answer that. Firstly, it was because that video crystallized something for me in particular, not just about the kind of individual death, although that is a very big part of that video. It's about the ways that that individual death not only impacted everyone in Philando Castile's life his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her daughter, his mother. They're all important characters in that story, but also the way that that death kind of in a way similar to
George Floyd, really resonated with people, not just because we could see it, but because what we saw was so blatantly violent. And to me, it crystallizes not just, again, the individual action, but the real perpetrator of the problem, which is the law itself. And so that scene allowed me, as I was watching it over and over again and trying to figure out why I was compelled to watch it over, over and over again, it really crystallized the perpetrator of the problem, which is not the individual actor or the individual death, but a structure that allows such a death to occur, a structure that allows for the wounding not only of that particular Black person, but for all the people that that affected his family. And then again, all the other people who bore witness to it because of its viral nature. And that's the other reason why I talked about that particular death, is because it is an example of the hypervisibility of Black death that we've all become sadly accustomed to in the last decade or so, and that particular way of encountering Black Death, that particular way of encountering state sanctioned violence, is what generates this way of regarding Black pain. It's what generates the inability for us to act as if the law or our institutions, as they're currently constructed, can be recourse to making deaths, like what happened to Philando Castile possible. And so I wanted to use that as an entry point to think about the structure and structuring nature of anti-Black violence and the necessity of abolition as the only way to make those violences less likely to happen.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:19] You know, when we talk about abolition, especially as a non- Black person, it all sounds really abstract. It sounds sort of like, yes, we know we need systems change. And I'm definitely one of the first persons to say we need systems change. But it's really difficult sometimes to get at the example that shows you just how we actually all suffer from the system that we're under across race and gender. And I thought that the quote that you used of Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando, really connected the dots for me. Here's what she said in the press conference after the police officer was acquitted: "the system continues to fail Black people and will continue to fail you all." In other words, full recognition as human beings will never be attained for Black people in America or maybe all over the world. But beyond curing the ills of anti- Blackness, how does abolition work for everybody?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:14:16] Yeah, what we need to understand and that Valerie Castile quote is telling, is that we operate underneath a system, all of us. And so we can point to anti-Black violence and terror as a particular element of that system. But it's just one element, right? Abolition, as I understand it, coming out of movement is
about all the ways that this system causes harm. And that's not just about Black people or Blackness. It's about heteropatriarchy. And we see that, right, in the kind of anti-trans legislation that has become so popular in states that have Republican governments or right-leaning governments. The ways that there was an uptick and perhaps still remains an uptick in anti-Asian violence. All of this is part of the same white supremacist, heteropatriarchal anti-Black structure. The different ways that there have been attacks on people who are houseless and the inability for the state as such, to actually do anything to help those who are houseless, even though it's well within their means to do so. The cost of college, the rising costs of rent and living, and the kind of inflation that everyone's been talking about that is not some natural force, but is a product of manipulation by people who have the means to do so. All of that is a system, a structure that is interconnected and that affects all of us in different ways, even if some folks aren't subject to anti-Black violence. Right. And so abolition is a unifying theory of everything that causes harm and is the answer to those harms. And as you mentioned, it's going to take a collective recognition that even though we might be impacted by this system differently, we're still impacted. And that a different way of living, a different way of relating, a different way of aspiring is possible. And that is the signal call of abolition.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:42] We're taking a short break, and when we continue, we'll explore the kind of politics on the other side of pain and struggle, an invitation to a world of joy and care.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:54] But first. I want to tell you about a fellow democracy Group podcast that we think you'll enjoy called Let's Find Common Ground. I can guarantee I'm not the first to tell you that America is rife with polarization and division. Let's Find Common Ground is a biweekly podcast that shares stories and interviews, where guests discuss constructive ways to respect all kinds of people who have very different ways of looking at the world. The hosts, Ashley Milne-Tyte and Richard Davies, interview changemakers from members of Congress of both parties, to social activists, journalists and authors. Find episodes at the Democracy Group website or at CommonGroundcommittee.org/podcast. On Let's Find Common Ground, they find common ground one episode at a time.
And now let's return to my conversation with Christopher Paul Harris.
Mila Atmos: [00:17:58] Well, you mentioned earlier that a big part of that practice that comes out of the movement was joy as a practice of radical politics, and I thought it would be useful here for you to explain what Black Joy is, and also what is the ideological work that Black Joy is doing. Or joy as a practice of politics?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:18:23] Yeah. On the surface, something like joy or Black joy can be easily dismissed as non-political. Right? Just thinking about the popularity of terms like Black joy or people celebrating rest or, you know, these types of things that can seem non-political and maybe are operationalized by certain people in non-political ways. But to me, joy is central. On the one hand, it's central as an invitation to not simply rest in anger, to not simply rest in pain, to not simply feel aggrieved. Although all those things are valid and natural, it's again, what we do with those emotions and joy is one thing that we can do naturally, subconsciously, unconsciously. It's the recognition that despite the pain, despite the anger, despite the rage, that Black and other marginalized communities have still survived, they've done more than survived. They've thrived. Joy is the evidence that not only are we still here despite all the violence. It is what we can be. It's what we can become. And that's why I see it as a prefigurative politics. It's not just a counterweight. It suggests what's possible on the other side of pain, on the other side of struggle. And that's what I mean by invitation. It's an invitation to imagine a world where all we have is joy. That joy is the main experience in our lives, rather than struggle or pain. And so that's part of the ideological work I think it's doing. It's that invitation part. The other part of it, and I often cite this quote by a organizer in the organization that I was a part of, the Black Youth Project 100, who says, "without joy, we won't win." You know, if we can't muster joy, if we can't recognize pleasure, if we can't have our songs, our dances, and our chants while we're organizing for our collective liberation, then we're just going to get bogged down and worn out, right? The last thing I'll say about it is that joy is a powerful communicator. It can galvanize people in ways that pain and anger and rage doesn't or can't. That's not its role. Pain can get you angry. Violence can make you angry. But what's the thing that's going to keep you there? It's the capacity to recognize and hold on to and spread joy. And it's amazing. Like I've been all over the world. And this language of Black joy is used by Black people all over the place. We have to take that seriously. Not in a superficial way, but as a way of creating or recreating a collective sense of us that isn't just about pain, it's about something else. And again, I think that being about something else more than pain,
something above pain, something beyond pain is necessary. And that's why I see it as a prefigurative politics. It tells us what's possible, just as it tells us what's already here.
Mila Atmos: [00:21:45] Right. Well, it's very powerful. I mean, I have to say it reminds me a little bit of the Bible and the land of milk and honey. This is the place where we're all going to be full of joy. I believe it's possible, but we all have to band together and do the work. I want to pivot here to care and healing justice, which you argue are also essential to the practice of liberation. In what way is care a political act?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:22:14] Yeah. So care underlies all of this. If you don't care, you won't have regard for Black pain. If you don't care, you won't recognize the power of Black joy. And how Black joy isn't just any kind of joy, it's a particular joy and a joy that is directly connected to pain. Black joy doesn't make sense without Black pain, but you don't see that or recognize that if you don't care. Care is also recognizing that there is collective and generational trauma that we all carry Black people, other marginalized communities, people who are gendered, people who are sexualized. You know, like all of the many interlocking systems of oppression that people today encounter in ways that we sometimes don't recognize. And I say today, not as if people in the past haven't encountered it, but it's just to say that it keeps getting sedimented and passed down. And care is a way of recognizing that we all need to heal in some way, and that particularly within movements and Black movements, that needs to be a part of our daily praxis that we need to heal. Because the trauma that we all carry subconsciously or consciously affects how we show up in space. It affects how we struggle together, how we treat one another. So that's why, to me, care is the linchpin of all of this, right? To have an ethics of care is necessary to heal. It's necessary to have a politic that is centered around the needs and experiences of the historically marginalized. Care is central to holding ourselves accountable for the ways that we reproduce harms. Care is essential to an analysis and critique of capitalism as a historical net harm for everyone. Without care, we won't see past the narratives that are connected to ideological strictures like liberalism, where we are invested in the idea of the individual rather than the collective, where we're invested in personal success rather than social wealth. Care is on the other side of ideology, or is perhaps its own kind of ideology, especially if it's embedded in the kind of systemic critique that I think that the movement articulates.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:55] Well, I think it would be really helpful for the listener to understand how this looks in practice. And in that chapter about care, you write about The Very Black Project, and I'd love for you to tell that story, because in my mind, I could really understand after reading this how it is a model for the culture of care.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:25:15] Yeah, shout out to the Very Black Project. I love the work that they do. And I should say in bringing in examples like The Very Black Project, trying to make an argument about how we read and think about movement in general. Right. You might not, on the surface, think that a social media page is doing movement work, but it very much is. And especially in the present moment, social media sites like the Very Black Project do important work for people. It is the kind of collective sharing of elements of the past, of the kind of educative function, of introducing words and giving definitions, both obvious words like care, diasporic terms from the continent, bringing people in, and inviting them into thinking through the vast array of the lived experience of Black people across the diaspora. That's important care work, especially over the last ten plus years when we are inundated with viral images of Black Death or reports of Black harm and violences. It's important to have a site like the Very Black Project, which doesn't shy away from those things, but also is celebratory about the expanse that is the Black experience, the joyfulness within Black life, being able to have a platform or have a place where conversations around Blackness and the Black experience can exist. It's also, you know, another important form of care. And it was really fascinating to me to see just how interconnected the language, the aesthetic, the politics, the mode that is articulated through a platform like the Very Black Project mirrors, echoes, resonates with the sort of on the ground experiences that I was observing in traditional organizing spaces. And so The Very Black Project is a really powerful example of creating an archive with and for and to Black life, especially in a moment where Black Death has been so central.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:27] Right. Yes. The spectacle of Black pain has been so central to the way that we understand on the outside, not being Black, what it means to be Black. So how do you think the movement for Black lives has changed public understanding of how anti-Blackness works across our society? And by that I mean the understanding by non-Black people. And then as an add on to that, how has that understanding changed the political landscape for everyone?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:28:00] Yeah. Well, I think there's a very tangible ways that the time of Black Lives Matter has shifted things. For example, the language of anti- Blackness itself is now par for the course. It's mainstreamed. A couple of years ago, during the uprisings, the New York Times even was publishing op eds that had anti- Blackness in the title. Right. And, you know, The New York Times is in no way a radical publication, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:28:24] Definitely not.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:28:26] So so we can see that just the language has shifted during the time of Black Lives Matter, and the movement and movement culture is very much responsible for the idea of a margins to center perspective, which is not unique to the movement. Right? Black feminists have been talking about that for years, but I think that the movement has helped to amplify that in really important ways. The movement has given us an advance in the language of abolition, right. Which again, doesn't begin with the movement, but it has been amplified during this movement moment. Just as importantly, I think recognizing and celebrating the vast expanse of Black life, what Blackness is and has been and can be, is a major shift in Black political thought that, I think, has become part of a public way of interrogating Blackness and Black living, not just for Black people, but outside of that as well. And so all of these are really important advances now when it comes to the political and a traditional sense in how the movement has impacted that. There's open questions about this. Right. And I think those questions kind of track back to a larger point that I'm trying to make, that our institutions are not built to hold this kind of politics. This is why we have to come up with something else. Still, you see how the movement and movement campaigns have impacted elected offices, particularly on the District Attorney level, for example, there's been a lot of more movement leaning folks who have moved into those positions or movement has been able to remove people from those positions. And so that's a very tangible political effect. But at the end of the day, there are obvious limits to what any radical movement can do without transformative structural change. And so you can get a handful of radically minded people into office. And that's happened. But I'm skeptical of the degree to which the electoral route or the public policy route can actually move us towards where we ought to be. Something much more radical needs to happen, just to use that word. And I think that the movement has given us language to name that in important ways. My hope is that whatever comes next can take the political imaginary
that the movement has provided, and advance that further, and take some of the ways that the movement hasn't succeeded institutionally, for example, and learn from those mistakes.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:23] Yeah, I agree. I think what we need is systems change completely. Abolition, to your point. But in the meantime, I also believe that having people in office who are radical minded, let's say, do make a difference on the margins, it's not pointless. And I also think that maybe we can't go from A to B without having to muddle through a little bit and see that really tinkering at the edges is not going to achieve the desired outcome. You know, if you really want equity for everybody, it's not going to happen through public policy, because the system is not designed to do that, as you've already pointed out.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:32:04] Exactly, exactly. And I like the point, though, that you're making, and I just want to emphasize it as well, is that to say that our institutions will not liberate us, and to say that public policy isn't going to get us there, and to say that electoral politics isn't the answer, isn't to dismiss those things, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:32:24] Yes.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:32:24] To dismiss the necessity of doing those things... Somebody's got to do that. Maybe that won't be my work, per se, but somebody's got to do that. And you do have to take seriously not only that people need public policy for their everyday lives, right? We're talking about people's lives,
Mila Atmos: [00:32:39] Correct.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:32:40] Right. And so you can't just traffic in the possible when the material is very clearly impacting people. So there's that side of it and the other side of it. And this has been a conversation in radical and revolutionary politics forever. Basically, the way our institutions and our systems currently work is how people understand them. And you really got to meet people where they are and to simply reject our institutions as insufficient. I mean, I do reject our institutions, but to pretend that that's what everybody else thinks is to ignore where everyone else is at. And so the kind of dualism that you were gesturing towards, I think, is important to have a horizon that
invites people to see past where we are, while recognizing that most people are actually grounded in the situation as it is. And so it's a give and take, right? You got to give and concede the fact that you can't ignore electoral politics because most people understand politics through electoral politics, while you still try to push people to imagine what a world that, say, didn't have a president might look like, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:33:54] Yeah. That's right. Well, speaking of the here and now, you know, in the world that we actually live in, what are two things an everyday person can do to practice radical politics or to include the imaginary in their everyday politicking, civic action?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:34:13] Yeah. You know, I think the most important thing that people can do is to not take our institutions for granted, not take our ways of living for granted, as if that's the only way it can be. Right? As if that is just how it is and connected to not taking things for granted, I think, is to ask questions, to interrogate our situation. To use example that I mentioned before, why is it that we have a president again? Why is it the president elected the way the president is elected? Do we want it to be that way? And so I think, to ask questions and to not take things for granted, kind of go hand in hand, because if we don't just assume that the way things are was inevitable, that it's somehow natural if we don't just assume that the way things are are good, then that opens us up to ask, as I mentioned before, why is it this way? How did it become this way? Do I like it this way? And I really think that that part is important. I don't think people ask themselves, what do I actually like it like this? Do I want things to be like this? Not just things in an abstract way, but very concretely. Do I want the university to cost this? Do I want the continued proliferation of university administrators? Would I like the university's resources to be directed elsewhere, you know, question aspects of our lives, and in doing that, allow ourselves the right to say. We don't want it this way. To me, this is a podcast about pro-democracy and civic podcasts. I mean, that's the height of exercising one's civic duty to ask these types of questions, to not take things for granted to to not just go along with it because that's how it is, or that's how it's always appeared to be. Nothing is inevitable. And taking that seriously are things that anybody can do.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:14] Yes.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:36:15] And not not only that anybody could do, but things that we should be doing, asking questions and not taking things for granted are vital necessities, particularly in this moment.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:24] Yeah, I totally agree that nothing is inevitable, and I think people don't really think about it that way and asking questions as a true action. I know some people think, oh, that's just thinking that's, you know, that's not real. It is. Thinking is hard work, I think, especially if you, like you said, take it seriously. So as we are closing out our conversation here today, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:36:50] Well, I'm not one that traffics in a lot of hope just because, you know, things can be quite bleak. Or perhaps I use a different word, but to use that word.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:02] Use a different word, you know, it's okay not to be, quote, hopeful. You know, describe what gets you up in the morning and continues to do the work. Maybe that.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:37:10] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great reframing. What's really exciting to me right now is like how many people all over the world are taking to the streets in support of Palestine. There is a recognition, and this will go back to why I don't like the word hope. It reminds me of the fervor of the 2020 uprisings, and how people all around the world were taking to the streets in support of Black life that my generation, younger generations, are not buying the rhetoric, whether it's about Israel and Palestine, whether it's about Black life, whether it's about queer, trans, gender non-conforming folks, people are breaking free, it seems, at least on the ideational level, and discursively the kind of boxes that we inherited when we were growing up. And that's really exciting. And if one is to be hopeful, I think that you can find kernels of hope there, that the status quo doesn't work for a lot of people anymore, and they're willing to take to the streets about it. And the reason why I don't like to use the word hope is that it really can feel sometimes like that doesn't matter, right? All around the world, people are in the streets over Palestine, but the US government doesn't care. The international community sometimes, you know, makes rhetorical gestures to care, but they're not doing anything about it. And so that just reinforces the
impossibility of exercising democracy within our institutional framework. It's not anything against democracy as such, but we don't have one, because if we did, then when we say stop the genocide in Gaza, it would stop, right? But that's not what's happening. And so that's why abolition is necessary, because it should be impossible for our purported leaders to act in our name against what we wish. But that has happened. It's happening now. It's perpetually happened. Particularly when it comes to war. And so if anything crystallizes the failure of our democracy as it stands, it's war. And this is a historical thing, right? This is not new. So I guess this is a long winded and meandering way of answering the question, but it excites me that people aren't taking things for granted when it comes to, you know, contemporary conflicts, whether that be state sanctioned violence against Black people here in the US or around the world, or state sanctioned violence against the people of Gaza. People aren't just accepting that. And that's a beautiful thing to witness and be a part of.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:00] Hear, hear. Here's hoping for peace. Thank you very much, Chris, for joining us on the podcast. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Christopher Paul Harris: [00:40:07] Thank you for having me. This was nice.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:10] Christopher Paul Harris is assistant professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine and the author of To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Shaun Donovan. He's the CEO and president of Enterprise Community Partners, served in President Obama's cabinet as secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as director of the US Office of Management and Budget, and prior to that, he was commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Shaun Donovan: [00:40:54] I do think there is a fundamental threshold of participation in our democratic society that requires housing to be kind of platform or a foundation for that. And I will say, in a country where it is an entitlement to get food assistance or to get assistance with health care, every child has the right to go to public school. Only one out of five low income people in this country that is eligible on an income basis actually gets housing assistance. 20% get it.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:27] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
Did you know we have a YouTube channel? Seriously! We do. And actually quite a lot of people listen to the show there. If that's you, Hello! If not, you'll find punchy episode clips, full interviews and more. Subscribe at youtube.com/futurehindsight.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:42:03] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.